Enemus

by: Sean Yoo

This game was made for my level 2 project at The League of Amazing Programmers.
Click here to download and play!

1. Why I Made This Game

I decided to make this game because I liked the concept of League Invaders, but I wanted to make a game where you could aim your weapon, rather than move around. The emus were from my class tradition where everyone made their game involving emus. The game that I made appealed to me because it was both challenging to a new player, but still fun to play for an experienced veteran such as myself:)

2. What I Learned

I learned that the instructions were hard to understand and many people did not read all of the instructions. To fix this, I made my instructions more concise and easier to understand. Many of my testers didn't seem to mind anything from my game other than the fact that the game was too hard. I slowed down the spawn rate of the emus so that the player could get a good feel for the basics of the game before it got really intense :/

3. Architecture of My Game

There are many aspects to my game. The emus are coming from the top of the screen and every time one reaches the bottom of my game, you lose a life. You start each game with 5 lives and you lose when u run out of lives. You can aim and shoot pancakes at the emus, which kills them. Whenever an emu dies, you gain 10 emubucks. When you have a hundred emubucks, you can choose an upgrade, either having a higher rate of fire, more lives, or more piercing pancakes. The rate the emus spawn increases over time. The emus, the character, the upgrade buttons, and the projectiles are all objects made in their each individual class. The visuals are mainly controlled in the GamePanel class, and the updating of the game is mainly controlled in the ObjectManager class.

4. Technical Implementation

I am most proud of the aiming system. The targeting laser took many weeks to figure out, with many failed designs. With the help of my teacher, I made a line that accurately showed where the pancakes were going to fire. One end of the line was at the character, and the other used sine and cosine of the angle that the character was turned to.

5. Most Challenging Part

The most challenging part of this project was also the targeting laser. This feature took the most time of my game by far. I had many designs for the laser, most of which were failed. With the help of my teacher, I managed to create a working targeting laser after about two months. If I were to return to this game to add to it, I would try to add more upgrades, make the emus take more pancakes to kill so that the game would still be interactive and you wouldn't be invulnerable when you have enough upgrades. I would also try to make the start a bit easier. Right now, the beginning seems too challenging while the end seems too easy and I want to try and balance the game to make it more fun.

6. Future Fixes and Updates

If I were to continue working on this game, I would make the game more interactive as the game continues. For example, I would add more upgrades with different costs that would affect your weapon more. Also, I would make the emus harder to kill (maybe making them take 2 hits to kill). And the game should probably have a better title screen.